The Wall Street Journal says that Virginia Governor Tim Kaine brings “versatile appeal” to the ticket and points out the obvious reasons for choosing him:
But his selection may bolster the ticket with someone with experience running a large, generally well-regarded state government, and help Sen. Obama pick up blue-collar white voters.
Virginia was just named the best state for business for the third year in a row, although we are ranked 26th in growth prospects, which isn’t so good.
Nothing really new in the WSJ article for those of us in Virginia but it is a good intro piece for the rest of the country.
h/t Bearing Drift
VIVIAN J. PAIGE | All Politics is Local 
Worth pointing out that this is a WSJ *news* article (of which I generally have a high opinion) and not a WSJ op-ed (most of which make me wonder if the writers were high).
If you think the economy’s going to be the number 1 issue this year, it’s hard to argue with putting the Governor of the best state for business on the ticket.
(incidentally, the 26th growth potential rating is noteworthy, but Forbes’ other big complaint about Virginia is that labor costs are rising, driving business costs closer to the national average. Boo hoo. Hard working Virginians are earning more money, and we’re *still* the best state to do business in. I will DEFINITELY take a narrower lead over Utah if it means that Virginian workers have the opportunity to earn a brighter, more-secure financial future, especially while the national economy crumbles around us).
Best state to do business designations, almost by definition, mean the opposite for labor. There are plenty of positive components to it, for sure, but I’m not terribly impressed by it.
I know someone’s going to try and take away my Democratic Party membership card for saying this, but I can’t help but notice the two states at the bottom of the list–Louisiana and West Virginia–don’t have particularly great reputations for taking care of working citizens. There are four states in the top ten on Forbes’ list that have better labor/business costs than Virginia. There are also four states with better labor/business costs in the bottom ten. Sometimes what’s good for business is bad for labor, but that’s not always so.
Forbes doesn’t release the metrics behind their designations or the precise weights they use for those metrics to reach their final conclusions–but they assure that business operating costs, including labor costs and energy–are the biggest factors. Inspite of climbing labor-costs and a middle-of-the-pack overall business cost ranking, Virginia continues to retain the lead because it ranks high in quality of life, regulation, economic environment, and labor supply and quality.
So relative to the rest of the country, we have succeeding businesses, good quality of life, a stable in-state economy that’s grown over the last five years faster than the average score for every other state, and a well-educated work-force that has been taking home more paycheck relative to the rest of the country lately. It’s true that when Forbes bemoans rising labor costs in the article that what they’re saying is, “we really wish all of you bums were making less money!” But leaving aside what those limp-wristed whiskey-sipping effete country club conservative elitists think for just a minute: shouldn’t we take at least a little bit of pride in knowing that businesses AND workers have been succeeding in Virginia lately?